Although Hutson herself did not begin her job until June, a month after Landrieu and Serpas were sworn in, she said in the report that under former Mayor Ray Nagin and Superintendent Warren Riley, "cooperation had been negligible."

By contrast, she said, Landrieu and Serpas "both pledged to cooperate with the mission of (her office), which made for a new start."

The monitor's office was created by the City Council to review the Police Department's internal investigations of alleged misconduct by officers, identify patterns or trends in such incidents, and recommend changes in policies and training to improve officers' performance and increase the public's trust in the department.

The monitor office's "crowning achievement" in 2010, the report says, "was the successful collaboration with the NOPD on a protocol that is a blueprint for the sharing of information between the two departments."

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The agreement, it says, "represents a milestone in the NOPD's path to regaining the trust of the public by embracing transparency and oversight."

The monitor's first "official recommendation" to the NOPD, the report notes, "was to establish a new 'critical incidents' investigations team" to be led by the deputy superintendent in charge of the department's Public Integrity Bureau. Creating such a team will make it easier for the monitor's office to review the conduct of officers in cases where, for instance, they fire their weapons. Hutson herself went to the scene of five such shootings last year for firsthand investigations.

Hutson's report notes that in 2010 Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux's office secured an internal affairs database, computers and a scanner "to help facilitate the sharing of information" between the Public Integrity Bureau and her office. "The database will be a monumental tool in achieving the objectives of the office," she writes.